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The violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville reflects the dangerous, open-the-floodgates culture that having a Bully-in-Chief in the White House has created in America.
Hundreds of protesters descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017 for a “Unite the Right” rally.
The rally was dispersed by police minutes after its scheduled start at noon, after clashes between rallygoers and counter-protesters, and after a torchlit pre-rally march Friday night descended into violence.
But later that day, as rallygoers began a march and counterprotests continued, a reported Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.
Self-described “pro-white” activist Jason Kessler organized the rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville.
Kessler is affiliated with the alt-right movement that uses internet trolling tactics to argue against diversity and “identity po…

In California's Death Row's "Adjustment Center," Condemned Men Wait in Solitary Confinement

"When we were sentenced to death," wrote Carlos M. Argueta from death row in California, "we weren't sentenced to be mistreated, humiliated, discriminated against, psychologically tortured and kept in solitary dungeons until the day of our executions. Never once did the judge say that was to be part of our sentence." He was speaking about life in San Quentin State Prison's Adjustment Center, a "prison within a prison" with a name worthy of any fictional dystopia.

The Adjustment Center is at the epicenter of California's death row system, which The Atlantic recently called "simultaneously the most and least prolific wielder of the death penalty." Although the state continually metes out death sentences - there were 749 people awaiting execution last July, nearly twice as many as the next highest state - almost no one is executed. California held just 6 executions since the start of the 21st century, and none since 2006. In March of this year, The LA Times reported that death row at San Quentin - home to all men on death row in California - has literally run out of room.

The Adjustment Center, the harshest of the 3 death row units at San Quentin, is severe even compared to other segregation units in the California prison system and death row units in most other states. And California's long death row delays mean these exceptionally harsh conditions can last for decades.

The average time spent on death row in California was 16.1 years in 2013, and by the end of 2014, nearly 78 % of the male death row population had been there for 10 years or longer. Citing excessive delays, in 2008 the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice declared the state's death penalty system "dysfunctional."

And in a 2014 decision that found the system unconstitutional (the decision was overturned on procedural grounds in November), federal judge Cormac J. Carney declared that in California, "the death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death."

A class action lawsuit filed in June 2015, Lopez v Brown, offers a rare glimpse into the daily lives of the people who live in the Adjustment Center. Its 6 named plaintiffs - Bobby Lopez, Marco Topete, John Myles, Richardo Roldan, John Gonzales, and Ronaldo Medrano Ayala - allege their continued detention in the Adjustment Center violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These men have been in the Adjustment Center for periods of time ranging from 3 to 26 years. Some received just one disciplinary write-up that affected their classification during that entire period, for participating in a peaceful hunger strike.

These men and their fellow Adjustment Center residents spend between 21 and 24 hours a day - often for years on end - inside cells roughly 6 by 9 feet, smaller than a standard parking spot. There is no natural light or airflow; temperatures in the cells fluctuate from very hot to very cold. Beds consist of a thin mattress on a steel or concrete slab. There are no chairs or desks in the cells.

According to the complaint, "When writing letters to loved ones, Roldan kneels on his shower shoes and uses his bunk as a table. Ayala fashions a seat out of the banker's boxes where he keeps his property. Gonzales and Topete sit on a blanket on the floor of their cells and write on their beds. For Topete, who has chronic back pain, sitting in that position becomes excruciating after 15 minutes. As a result, he can only write and research in brief increments."

Those living in the Adjustment Center are continually immersed in noise. The slamming of security gates and cell doors echo through the unit, exacerbated by high ceilings and enclosed steel cells. Residents are constantly shouting, banging, or screaming, either in desperate attempts to communicate with one another or as a primal response to their unbearable conditions. The racket continues around the clock: chronic sleep deprivation is one of many severe mental and physical health effects of long-term confinement in the Adjustment Center.

Access to healthcare of any kind is extremely limited, and in many circumstances nonexistent. When an Adjustment Center resident requests a medical appointment, it can take so long to materialize that in a letter to Solitary Watch, one resident quipped, "By the time you see a doctor your 24-flu has passed or you're about to pass."

Mental health assessments, when they occur at all, are often conducted through a cell door within earshot of guards and other residents. As sensitive health information can easily be used against them by guards and other prisoners, it is impossible for Adjustment Center residents to be honest about their mental health, and therefore impossible to receive appropriate treatment.

The same man quoted above commented, "I don't know the extent of my own mental damage but I do know more people have died on death row at San Quentin from suicide than execution." Indeed, suicide rates on death row are roughly 10 times greater than in society more broadly, and several times greater than in the general prison population.

California is one of the few states that keep people in segregation for alleged gang affiliation, divorced from any assessment of their actual behavior within prison. As a result, an individual who has never violated a prison rule can end up in the Adjustment Center for suspicion of current or former gang involvement. There is no process for reviewing alleged affiliation, and individuals can be held in the Adjustment Center for years on the flimsiest evidence. Some individuals are assumed to have gang allegiances simply because of their ethnicity or the region where they grew up.

Technically, Adjustment Center residents are entitled to a review of their placement every 90 days, but this rarely results in a transfer to East Block or North Segregation, San Quentin's other death row units. With no ability to disprove gang affiliations that were never proven in the first place, continued detention is almost a certainty.

Other residents were placed in the Adjustment Center for disciplinary infractions committed while in one of the other death row units. For these men as well, it is very challenging to get transferred out, even after long periods of violation-free behavior.

Adjustment Center residents are not allowed to engage in any educational, recreational, or vocational programming. They may leave their cells for just 5 reasons:

Before and after any movement within the unit, men are routinely strip searched, often in front of other Adjustment Center residents and guards, even if they have not come into contact with anyone else during their time out of cell.

San Quentin's death row

While in the yard, residents have access to small open yards or walk-alone cages (roughly twice as big as a cell), along with a few handballs and the occasional pull-up bar. Although yard time is a rare opportunity for Adjustment Center residents to interact with others, prisoners report that any interaction may be perceived by the guards as "gang activity" and used to justify keeping them in the Adjustment Center - so some residents choose not to interact.

In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident lamented the seeming interminability of the status quo: "What is happening today and tomorrow in solitary confinement is the same stuff which has taken place 10 and 15 plus years ago.

"In fact you will be able to find the same prisoners there in continuous solitary placement, subjected to the same inhumane conditions."

Adjustment Center residents - despite extremely restrictive conditions - joined prisoners statewide in peaceful hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013. Not only did the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) ignore the strikers' reasonable demands - access to recreation activities, increased ability to communicate with their families, meaningful review of their detention in the Adjustment Center - officials considered participation in the strike a disciplinary offense and used it to justify keeping participants in the Adjustment Center.

In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident expressed unwillingness to discuss other forms of non-violent activism for the same reason: peaceful acts of protest, he said, are "re-interpreted as a threat to security" and "written into the local rules to make non-violent acts of resistance [into] a 'rule violation.'"

The strikes did, however, succeed in bringing attention to conditions in California's prison system and exposing some cracks in its system of long-term solitary confinement. Over the past few years, several lawsuits have challenged the state's use of solitary confinement on and off death row, including Lopez v. Brown.

EmilyRose Johns, working on the Lopez case with the law firm Siegel & Yee, told Solitary Watch they are at a very early stage of settlement talks with CDCR. She noted that these talks are taking place "in the shadow of Ashker v. Brown," a related case that settled with CDCR in September. Although the Ashker settlement has no direct effect on Adjustment Center residents, it has significant implications for litigation and policy work to reform conditions on California's death row.

Ashker was a class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of those who have spent a decade or more in solitary confinement in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California's Pelican Bay State Prison. Like Lopez, Ashker argued that long term segregation violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and that the lack of meaningful review of SHU placement violates the right to due process. The Adjustment Center is not technically covered by the lawsuit - it is not specifically classified as a SHU - but the conditions challenged in Ashker are extremely similar to those of the Adjustment Center, including the non-evidence-based criteria for ascertaining gang affiliation.

The Ashker settlement will transform the "status-based" system for placing people in SHUs to a "behavior-based" system. Individuals will only be put in the SHU if they have committed verified "SHU-eligible" rule violations, such as violence, weapons possession, or escape attempts - not merely for alleged gang affiliation.

The settlement also significantly limits the time individuals may spend in solitary confinement. CCR noted that in settling Ashker, "California has implicitly recognized the harm to prisoners from very prolonged solitary confinement." CCR lawyer Alexis Agathocleous, speaking to Solitary Watch, noted that CDCR has "acknowledged that other options are possible" for managing behavior in prison, besides long-term segregation. Those working on Lopez will look to the Ashker settlement for an understanding of what CDCR may be willing to put on the table.

EmilyRose Johns noted, however, that there are obstacles to negotiating a settlement for those on death row that Ashker didn't have to grapple with, including different regulatory context and an even greater stigma. Settlement discussions could continue for months or even years; if discussions break down and the case goes to trial, it will almost certainly be years before a judgment arrives. Meanwhile, life - such as it is - will go on for the men who live in the Adjustment Center. With executions apparently stalled indefinitely, the severe living conditions of individuals on death row, ostensibly temporary, are seemingly more and more permanent.

For the named plaintiffs in Lopez, however, things will be a bit different. As a result of the lawsuit, Johns noted, they have all been transferred out of the Adjustment Center and into slightly less stringent conditions in East Block. Their executions continue to be nowhere in sight.

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Waves of executions are part of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's hard line on drug convicts. Australians best remember those of Bali Nine leaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, shot by firing squad in 2015 despite all efforts to save them. With more than 200 people on death row, why do anti-death penalty activists now see a ray of hope?
IN A SMALL Christian prayer room at Cilacap jail, on central Java’s south coast, a death-row prisoner talks diffidently about her wedding dress.
The Indonesian migrant worker and convicted drug dealer was once married to an abusive husband but separated long ago after he shunted her off to work in Taiwan.
Merri Utami had planned to wear her new white dress, not to second nuptials, but to her execution by firing squad last year.
She had been preparing to meet Jesus.
According to Indonesian protocol, she would be tied to a stake in a remote jungle clearing on Nusakambangan penal island off the port town of Cilacap, blindfolded and shot dead in t…

WEST PALM BEACH -- In a ruling that could prevent as many as 100 condemned inmates from seeking life sentences, the Florida Supreme Court this week rejected arguments that constitutional flaws with the state’s death penalty should benefit all 362 inmates on death row.
The much anticipated ruling strikes a blow to efforts to block the scheduled Aug. 24 execution of Mark James Asay for the 1987 shooting deaths of two Jacksonville men. It also will make it more difficult for all but one of seven men on death row for decades-old Palm Beach County murders to win life sentences as a result of the legal turmoil roiling the state’s death penalty.
While acknowledging that Asay and others may have other grounds to appeal their death sentences, the ruling is both far-reaching and troubling, said Robert Dunham, a lawyer and executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.
“Now what you have is a situation in which for about 200 cases there may be costly resentencings …

The terrorist group known as ISIS has released pictures of a man being thrown off a roof in Syria.
Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continues to actively target and execute gay men.
This week, the group’s propaganda agency released three pictures of a man being executed for suspected homosexuality.
The pictures were identified as being taken in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, though differing reports identify the location as Damascus.
The first photo shows the man being dangled from the top of a high building by three assailants.
The second pictures shows the man after he has been pushed off the ledge, plunging to his death.
In the third picture, his bloodied body is shown on the ground, as the crowd jeers and pelts him with stones.
Other pictures released by the propaganda agency show the enforcement of horrific brutal practices, including amputating the arm of a thief. Pictures also…

France condemns the execution in Iran, on August 10, of Alireza Tajiki, a minor at the time of the events and at the time of his sentencing, and expresses its concerns about reports of the imminent execution of Mehdi Bohlouli, also sentenced to death when he was a juvenile.
This execution is contrary to the international commitments that Iran itself has signed on to, particularly the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It is also a step backward with respect to the positive developments we have seen on human rights in Iran, most notably the Iranian Parliament’s adoption of a law on August 13 limiting the scope of the death penalty.
France reiterates its unwavering opposition to the death penalty throughout the world and in all circumstances.
It encourages Iran to continue its efforts and to establish a moratorium with a view to its abolition. Source: France Diplomatie, August 16, 2017

Rejecting international norms, Iran speeds the execution of minor offenders
On Tue…

One of the prisoners was 17 when he committed the alleged "crime"
Seven prisoners sentenced to death in Gohar Dasht (Rajaieh Shahr) Prison in Karaj, have been transferred to solitary confinement. These victims are faced with an imminent death threat.
Mehdi Bohlouli, who is now on the verge of execution after serving 15 years of imprisonment, was only 17 when arrested and this is the fourth time he has been transferred to solitary confinement for implementation of the death sentence.
Taking prisoners to the gallows to witness the shocking scene of the execution of other prisoners is a common practice of torture in the prisons of Iranian regime.
Transferring the young prisoner, Mehdi Bohlouli for execution is taking place while the execution of Alireza Tajiki, a young prisoner who was 15 years old at the time of his arrest, sparked a wave of hatred inside and outside of Iran, and international human rights organizations called it shameful and shocking. Alireza Tajiki was hang…

Jakarta: Bali nine drug mule Renae Lawrence is expected to have her jail sentence cut by six months which would see her complete her prison term by the middle of next year.
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The prison governor of Bangli jail, Diding Alfian, told Fairfax Media that Lawrence had been recommended for a six-month remission as part of Indonesian Independence Day celebrations on August 17.
Meanwhile Bali authorities said Australian fugitive Shaun Edward Davidson could have been a free man on Thursday if he had been granted a sentence remission.
Davidson escaped from Kerobokan jail via a waste tunnel in late June with just 10 weeks left of his 12-month jail sentence for using another man's passport.
"He was in for forged documents, we would have recommended him for remission if he behaved," Bali Corrections Chief Surung Pasaribu tol…

A prisoner was reportedly hanged at Shirvan Prison on murder charges. 2 prisoners were reportedly hanged at Zanjan Central Prison on drug related charges.
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Iran Human Rights had reported on the imminent execution of these prisoners and urged the international community to take action.
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NCRI - Two young 20- and 19-year-old prisoners from Afghanistan were sentenced to death in central prison of Zahedan, Southeast Iran, on the charges of armed robbery from a financial institution.
According to reports, they were subjected to intense physical and mental torture in the prison, in order to confess to what they were asked to in front of the television camera.
Hamza Noorzehi, 20, and Amir Noorzehi, 19, were arrested in Zahedan on 28 July 2014.
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According to their relatives, they had nothing to do with the armed robbery, and they were only working on their daily routine work.
At the time of arrest, Hamza Noorzehi, was 17 and Amir Noorzehi was 16 years old.
The Angels aka Arman financial institution was based in the city of Zahed…

The amendment will apply retroactively, thus commuting the sentences for many of the 5,300 inmates currently on death row for drug trafficking. Under the new bill, the punishment for those already convicted and given the death penalty or life in prison, other than those meeting the new execution requirements, will be commuted to up to 30 years in jail and a cash fine.
Iran’s parliament passed a long-awaited amendment to its drug trafficking laws on Sunday, raising the thresholds that can trigger capital punishment and potentially saving the lives of many on death row.
The bill must still be approved by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council but gained parliamentary approval after months of debate, according to parliament’s website and the ISNA news agency.
According to rights group Amnesty International, Iran was one of the top five executioners in the world in 2016, with most of its hangings related to illicit drugs. The watchdog noted sharp drops in the number of executions in …

I oppose the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner.
The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity.
To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values.
The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.
The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect.
It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class.
It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation.
It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner.
It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it.
Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit blog. It is based in Paris, France.
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